[img_inline align=”right” src=”http://padnws01.mcmaster.ca/images/Hamilton_Robert.jpg” caption=”Robert Hamilton”]Robert Hamilton, a multimedia professor at McMaster, was awarded a $20,000 research grant for new media and audio artists from the Canada Grants Council. The funding supports his project, “Moving Pictures”, an interactive display of still images. It was one of three to receive funding in this category.

“I have been fascinated for some time with creating moving images with stills, time-lapse photography and pixillation,” says Hamilton. “I began with 16 mm film, moved to the GameBoy Camera, then to webcams and more recently, a consumer quality digital still camera. This proposal is to develop an exhibit of new material where viewers will be able to interact with a projected display.”

His intent is to investigate the serial image aspect of his work as both wall installation and interactive projection using Max/MSP. Viewers will be able to determine the speed and direction of the sequential image playback according to their movement within a gallery environment.

Moving Pictures will investigate the digital application of ideas first set down by Etienne-Jules Marey and Eadweard Muybridge, Hamilton explains. “Both Marey and Muybridge chronicled the movement of the human body  and the idea of movement itself through the use of still photographic images. Their early discoveries helped to establish cinema and by extension contemporary technologies such as Quicktime.”

This is the third Canada Council Grant research grant Hamilton has received for his work at McMaster.

Hamilton also will appear in an upcoming art exhibit at the Reykjavik Art Museum entitled NINE Comics Festival. He will present a new video entitled Supper's Cooking, which is a collaboration between himself and well-known Canadian cartoonist David Collier. The exhibit takes place March 12 – April 24.

Editor's note: On Tuesday, March 8, Hamilton and his wife Titi, gave birth to a healthy baby boy, who they named Thomas.